Shattered Faith

The United States Postal Service kicked some major ass this week. I commend you good sirs. Shipped out Monday by my mother I received my Kindle today after work. 6 days from Pennsylvania to Iraq? Most good. But yes, I splurged on a Kindle. I opted for the regular Kindle 2 instead of waiting for the recently announced, larger Kindle DX. The latter will be larger (I forget the exact dimensions of both) but it’s about the size of a magazine. Not exactly the most portable machine. The price difference I also found relatively insane. The Kindle 2 is already at a pretty retarded price of $359, with the DX reaching $480 or something around that. What the christ? A couple more inches or real estate and about double the internal memory for $120? No. Even the large books are under a megabyte – I don’t think it’s worth it.

Anyway, on to the machine. Initial impressions have been very favorable. The device is retardedly thin, very light and has a nice size screen that’s pleasent on the eyes. The Electronic ink seems to work really well, aside from blowing my god damn mind (it’s REAL INK people in a MACHINE!). I don’t know about E-ink and screen burn-in, I’ll have to look into that. I’m going to assume it’s a non issue, as when you flick the power switch once it goes into ’sleep’ mode where it displays a random authors picture. I’ve already had the pleasure of staring at Mr. Edgar Allen Poe and Oscar Wilde’s beautiful mugs. According to the manual E-ink does not require power to stay visible, which saves an immense amount of battery life. They say it gets about two weeks on a single charge with the wifi off. The kindle feels good in my hands with a solid build. The buttons are all conventiently placed. I think the best thing I’ve seen with it so far is the built in Oxford dictionary. You can scroll onto any word while reading and get a definition of it. Did you know that ‘Vair’ is a blueish-gray fur trim typically obtained from a type of squirrel? I sure as fuck didn’t – but apparently I was supposed to know this. This is going to be the most handy thing ever. Plus I can search wikipedia whenever I damn feel like it once I can use the wifi/whispernet service. This thing is pretty damn rad so far. I also got a leather cover to keep it safe. It’s the official one, which apparently isn’t the best one but it suits me fine and doesn’t cost a third of what the kindle did itself like the “premium” covers. The only thing I wish it had was some way to keep it closed, but it should suffice.

Work was long, boring and relatively shitastic today. I was dilligently working (sleeping) this morning when the power decides to go out around 8:30. Now this is about the fourth time the power has gone out in the past week. How convenient, as soon as it gets stupid hot (it was in the 120s today). I tried to ignore it, hoping it would come back on but it won and eventually sweated me out. The power was still out by lunch when I decided to go to the PX to pick up some much needed Monster Java drinks that I’m completely addicted to now. It’s a coffee energy drink that sounds disgusting but it’s freaking amazing. So I walk to the PX, in the 120 degree sun, to find that the PX doesn’t have power either. Excellent. Now I’m hot, sweaty AND monsterless. The power decided not to return to us until about 4:30. The only thing that salvaged this day was the arrival of my Kindle.

That and I’ll be flying out of Balad in 4 weeks and 4 days. WHHAATTT